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I don’t know who prepared this satire; I’ll leave it to you Google freaks to find out…

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There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the population reference bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming there is at least one good child in each.

Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get onto the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are not talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second - 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized LEGO set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that flying reindeer can pull 10 times the normal amount, the job can’t be done with eight or even nine of them - Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).

A mass of nearly 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reaches the fifth house on his trip.

Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,000 g’s. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim considering all the high calorie snacks he must have consumed over the years) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he’s dead now.

It’s Magic!

Chong: Some WHAT, man?
Cheech: Some reindeers, y’know. He used ta hook them onto da sled, and then he used ta stand up inside da sled and hold on to da reins, and then call out their names, like, On, Donner! On, Blitzen! On, Chewy! On, Tavo! C’mon, Becto! And then, the reindeers used ta take off into da sky and fly across da sky, man!
Chong: Wow, man! That’s far out, man!
Cheech: Yeah! And then, when they flied across da sky, they used ta come down to place like, oh, Chicago, L.A., Nueva York and Pacoima and all those places, y’know, and then land on top of people’s roofs, and then ‘ol Santa Claus would make himself real small, y’know, like, a real small guy, and he’d come down da chimney and then he would give you all da stuff that he made, man. And…dig this, man…he did it all in one night, man!
Chong: Hey, just a minute, man. Now, how’d he do that, man?
Cheech: Oh, well, man, he took da freeway. How else, man?
Chong: No, man. No, man, how’d he do all that other stuff, man? Like, how’d he make himself small, man. And, how’d he, like, how’d he get the reindeer off the ground, man?
Cheech: Oh, well, man, he had some magic dust, man.
Chong: Some magic dust?
Cheech: Yeah, magic dust, y’know? He used ta give a little bit to da reindeer, a little bit to Santa Claus, a little bit more for Santa Claus, a little bit more…
Chong: And this would get the reindeer off, man?
Cheech: Aw, got ‘em off, man?!? Are you kidding, man? They flew all da way around da world, man!

About Birdbrains

This high-flying single-panel comic spotlights and savors the foibles, stupidity, and goofiness of our colorful unnatural world. It's all about attitude, as the denizens of Bluemel's realm devote themselves to surviving life's pitfalls, whether nesting in quicksand or coping with the technological advances of the tapeworm. From word play to fowl play, from weirdness in the wilderness, to the irony of iron ore, Birdbrains makes the offbeat seem natural. It's a feature to laugh at: if it makes you think, you're working too hard.